Prompt 11: Warm

	Red dragonfly, seeking company, lands on my shoulder. Soseki
A breeze this evening and little waves splash the shins of a blue heron. Buson
	I envy the tom cat: how easily he lets go of love's pain and longing! Etsujin
Burdened with dark thoughts I climbed the hill to find wild roses blooming. Buson

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Prompt 10: Desert or Deserted

Pam brings us this week's prompt, desert or deserted.

Portent
I am deserted
lonely blackbird in the sky
a single feather
slides across my line of sight
a sign of impending change
(Pamela Olson)

And another one:

Without flowing wine
How to enjoy lovely
Cherry blossoms?
(Anonymous)

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Prompt 9: Flowering

Thanks to Rachel Green for this week's prompt, flowering. 

Cherry blossoms
fall like fragrant rain
as I pass beneath

Here are a few poems to start the day:

The moment two bubbles
are united, they both vanish.
A lotus blooms.
(Kijo Murakami)

Temple bells die out.
The fragrant blossoms remain.
A perfect evening!
(Matsuo Basho)

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Prompt 8: Color

Tulip by Sian of Spin A Song of Sixpence

This week's prompt of color comes from My Bellavia.

Thomas' Artistic Prism He shares masterpieces, rainbows and smiles, painted with shades of truism. Love gathered hues and living color, there is no space for darkness here. His happy life goes on, ever missing shadows that cloud typical minds. 'Tis him, who shines in awe through a prism, coloring my world with his!

We also offer these haiku that treat the subject of color. Have fun!

Going deeper And still deeper — The green mountains. Santoka Taneda

Splendid affinity sun's great halo green leaves Sôen Nakagawa

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

A Gift from Sacred Ruminations

We received this award from Sacred Ruminations and pass it along to all who visit here as a thank you and a reminder of how much each of us values the interaction with and feedback from others.

Good morning world!

The poll was successful: 19 people responded:

• The pretty gray one in the box with code?  12 (63%)
  
• The ugly, long beta one with icons but without a box and no code?  2 (10%)
  
• The Blogrolling beta one with small text and code?  5 (26%)
  

Therefore, I have taken down the other two blogrolls. If you would like to put this blogroll on your site, the code is in the textbox underneath the blogroll on the sidebar.

Thank you for helping me know what most of you wanted in my highly scientific, unbiased poll!

♥ Andree

Prompt 7: Glory

Our blogging friend Gautami Tripathy of Delhi, India, suggests the prompt glory for this week.

How do you think of glory? As praise, honor, admiration, or distinction, accorded by common consent to a person or thing? As fame? As a praiseworthy quality? Perhaps as a flower or flag.

We're looking forward to receiving the gifts of your creative minds.
Here's what Gautami offers us:

dawn casts a shadow
over valleys, mountains
morning's glory

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

child's laughter
touching cores of soul
glory of angels

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

American Religious Poetry Anthology

From The Religion & Ethics newsletter published by PBS:

It makes sense that the Library of America, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to printing authoritative editions of America's most significant writings, would bring out an anthology of American religious poetry. After all, it has already done excellent two-volume collections of both 19th- and 20th-century poetry, as well as acclaimed volumes by Whitman, Stevens, Frost, and Pound, and in 1999 it published a worthy and well-received collection of American sermons.

For the most part, AMERICAN RELIGIOUS POEMS follows in that esteemed tradition. The anthology contains works by more than 200 poets, from the Colonial-era Bay Psalm Book (represented by Psalm 19) and the Puritan Thomas Dudley (1576-1653) to Korean-American Suji Kwock Kim (b. 1968) and Wheaton College English professor Brett Foster (b. 1973). In addition, editors Harold Bloom and Jesse Zuba, reflecting the ambiguous place of American Indians and African Americans in the nation's cultural history, include two separate sections -- one of American Indian songs and chants and the other a brief collection of spirituals and anonymous hymns. (More here.)

Prompt 6: Stranded

At the suggestion of blogger Noah the Great, we leave you

stranded.

Here's Noah's offering:

Motionless

A leashed dog roaming
freely through a neighborhood,
without an owner,

has no sense of where
it is, or where it could go,
opportunities

remain unseen by
prisoners who have always
been locked up and held

away from freedom,
they’ve probably never heard
of it, so they can’t

know what they would want,
stranded, distant, stuck in place,
like rusted bearings,

free to walk away,
to find new paths on old roads,
staying motionless.

k k k k k k k

How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Views from Raven's Nest: Honored

Views from Raven's Nest: Honored

We would like to thank Raven of Views from Raven's Nest for the Excellent Award. She is a member of One Single Impression. Her poetry has been warm and funny (Laughter), hopeful with the promise of growth (Spring), loving (Circle), and warm (Kindness). I am so grateful that she participates because she has taught me a lot about poetry writing.

Thank you, Raven! We hope you never stop writing.

Updates

Hi Everyone!

I would like to tell you about a couple of updates I have implemented. I really need your feedback on what works and what doesn't. I may even put a poll up on the sidebar once in awhile to get more responses.

1. We have a website to collect photos, poems and other stuff. It is called (what else?) One Single Impression Poetry. It is still pretty empty, but I'm sure it will grow as time goes on.
2. I have added the code for the blogroll. But it may not work on your blog. I would appreciate it if somebody would try to add the blogroll to their blog and see if it requires a password. The code is under the blogroll.
3. I have added a new blogroll.  This is a new blogroll from Google that shows the last time each blog was updated and the title of the post. I could have added a snippet from each of those posts but it took a lot of room. Each blog in the roll will open in a new window (which I really like). The problem? I haven't yet figured out how you can subscribe to this new blogroll.
4. We can always go to blogrolling.com blogroll like everybody is used to. Then you can subscribe and get the code easily. What should we do?
5. You can now subscribe to posts and/or comments with that new thingy in the sidebar. You have a choice of services (Yahoo, Google, etc.).
6. If somehow I have forgotten to add you to these blogrolls, please holler! 
   

So please be sure to leave me plenty of comments so I know what you need, OK? Thank you! And happy writing.

♥ Andree

Prompt 5: Laughter

This week's prompt of laughter comes from Scott the Poet at Poetic Leanings. Here's Scott's work:

Soothing
A million sunshines
Emanate from your laughter
When I can share it

Click here for an interesting resource on laughter and haiku.

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How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

A Call for Prompts and Photos

One Single Impression would like to include the prompts, haiku, and photos of our participants as we encourage each other as writers of poetry and as human beings casting thoughtful eyes around our world. Please email us or leave a comment suggestion a prompt and providing a poem. We would be honored to showcase your work and a link back to your site.

Prompt 4: Spring

As we enjoy the official beginning of this season, our prompt is spring.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Sick and feverish
Glimpse of cherry blossoms
Still shivering.



Kobayashi Issa
In my old home
which I forsook, the cherries
are in bloom.

spring's begun--
the sky over my house too
like old times

Shrikant Varma
The first shower of rain
The sky has thrown
Its roots on earth

Photo credits:
above: Tree by Lissa of Just Words
below: Daisy by Jem of A Longing for the Impossible
Thank you!

Z Z Z Z Z

How to Participate in One Single Impression

Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.

Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.

Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.

There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.

Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

New! You can now subscribe to OSI with Mr. Linky. If you have a problem, please let me know.

New! Subscribe to the new OSI Calendar (see sidebar) and always have upcoming themes available.

We look forward to your suggestions for future themes.

Thank you to all of you who have sent us photos for future posts! They are just outstanding photos. We will be using them in the chronological order in which they were received.

Enjoy!

Site Updates and Requests

We have made a couple of updates on the site for you:

You can now subscribe to Mr. Linky for One Single Impression. It is no longer a "private meme." You will now be able to select OSI if you want to include it on your post. Of course, it is not necessary to do so.

We are publishing future themes as soon as we know them so that you can plan ahead.

There is a Google calendar that you can subscribe to with these themes on it (see the sidebar). You can have notifications mailed to you, have the calendar included in your own calendar, or pretty much anything else that you want.

And our requests?

If you have any photos of spring, please let us know. We need them for Sunday! I only use photos from my week. And right now (Friday evening) we are coming out of an honest-to-goodness blizzard. Our deep snow is only deeper and colder now. So help me out. Flowers, lambs, sunshine, green things are all appreciated!

What themes would you like to see in the future? Would you like to write the theme post? OSI is for all of us, and we love input.

I'm hoping your weekend is warm and safe. We are safe in Vermont. We sure aren't warm but we're happy being home after an awful weather day.

♥ Andree

Prompt 3: Circle

Eternal

Mandala

∏

Irrational
Transcendental
Constant

k k k k k k k

How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Prompt 2: Kindness

This week's prompt is kindness.
As an act of Buddhist kindness, Basho once ingeniously reversed a cruel haiku made up by his witty disciple.

Kikaku had said:
A red firefly
Tear off its wings
A pepper.



Basho substituted:
A pepper
Give it wings
A red firefly.

Basho again:
I wish to pluck fresh green leaves to wipe away your tears

k k k k k k k

How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

Wow! and Mr. Linky Is Gone For Just A Moment

I'm sorry but I'm working with Mr. Linky to resolve an inconvenience that has popped up with the Mr. Linky widget. It will be back and all your names will be back. I promise!

I think I have everybody on the blogroll now. I think I have all the links in the sidebar that everyone has requested. If I have overlooked anybody at all, let me know! Getting the e-mail, feeds, links and blogroll all setup is easy enough but requires a personality that does well filing away information in folders in an e-mail client. I don't do well with that.

Can you believe that this blog averages over 100 visitors a day after less than a week? We had over 40 participants to the Change prompt and it may go higher. Sandy is all ready with Sunday's prompt. And I am going to do the March 16 prompt! I'm psyched.

Most importantly, thank you to all of you for your words of kindness and support. I have gotten so many wonderful e-mails that I am awed by this community. I am also so impressed by the poetry and artwork that I have seen this week. Sandy is sick with the flu, but I know for a fact that she feels the same way because she wrote me to tell me so.

What I read for Change was so good, in fact, that I am wondering how we can archive every single participant's poetry and art. Do you have any ideas? I don't want any poems to be lost in time. Blogs come and blogs go for reasons that we often have no control over. So if you have an idea of how we can keep a permanent record of our work, please leave a comment.

♥ Thank you again from the bottom of my heart — Andrée

Prompt #1: Change

The first prompt for One Single Impression is change.

As we worked together to create this blog to pick up where One Deep Breath has left off, change seemed an obvious choice for the first prompt. This blog reflects change as much it reflects a desire for continuity — especially the continuation of blogger relationships in the online poetry community. Focusing on the interests of a group and creating an inviting atmosphere is a change from the solo act of a personal blog.

As we embrace the challenges that come with change we also lean on old certainties. It's wonderful to transform a potential loss as an opportunity for growth. Thanks for being a part of the change!

Here are a few of Basho's haiku for inspiration.

Pommeling hail —
like the old oak,
I never change.

Do not forget the plum,
Blooming
in the thicket.

Wake, butterfly –
it’s late, we’ve miles
to go together.

Here is one from Akutagawa, Ryunosuke:

Sick and feverish
Glimpse of cherry blossoms
Still shivering.

k k k k k k k

How to Participate in One Single Impression

• Post your poetry on your blog. This does not need to be today. You can post any time during the week.
  
• Come here and enter your link into Mr. Linky. Other participants can easily find you by clicking your name in Mr. Linky.
• Enjoy the beautiful poems of the other bloggers.
  
• There is a new Mr. Linky each week so you always have to sign up on the current one. Please do not sign your name on Mr. Linky unless you are participating in One Single Impression.
  
• Mr. Linky will remain here forever. A list of past themes is on the sidebar. You can check back at any time for information on a past theme.

Thank you and enjoy!

'I See Beauty Within'

Jientje passed this along to me last week for leaving a comment that lifted her spirits. Mine was one of several encouraging, uplifting comments that she had received. Her gift in kind left me thinking about the power of kindness. Kindness — sincere, warm words from one person to another in the hope of making them feel good, feel valued, feel encouraged to continue in their endeavors is the greatest teacher, I think. It creates the room to grow, do more, do better. It creates a feeling of safety and belonging that in turn create an environment in which to create.

I'm depositing this gift here because that has been my experience of the participants in One Deep Breath and now One Single Impression. Together we seek to build up rather than tear down. May that spirit be the air we breathe on this site.